Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has released an overview of the “global
warming substitute amendment” to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security
Act (S. 2191) that will be the subject of debate during the first week
of June.
Changes from the version of Lieberman-Warner that was passed out of the
Committee on Environment and Public Works last year include:
Title V, Subtitle C: Emergency Off-Ramps. “If the price of carbon
allowances reaches a certain price range, there is a mechanism that
will automatically release additional emission allowances onto the
market to lower the price. The additional allowances are borrowed so
that the environmental integrity of the caps over the long term is
protected.”
Title V, Subtitle I: Financial Relief for Consumers. “The bill sets
aside a nearly $800 billion tax relief fund through 2050, which will
help consumers in need of assistance related to energy costs. The
precise details of the relief will be developed by the Finance
committee.”
Title XIV: Deficit Neutrality. “This section
auctions allowances and transfers the proceeds to the Treasury to
ensure that the bill is deficit-neutral.”
On May 16, 2008 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced
that it is seeking comments regarding a recent petition to reduce the
volume of renewable fuels required under the Renewable Fuel Standard
(RFS). In a letter sent to EPA on April 25,
2008, Governor Rick Perry of Texas requested that the
EPA cut the RFS
mandate for ethanol production in half (RFS mandate for 2008 is 9
billion gallons), citing recent economic impacts in Texas. In response,
EPA will soon publish a Federal Register
Notice opening a 30-day comment period on the request.
In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which established the
RFS program, provisions were included enabling
the EPA Administrator to suspend part of the
RFS if its implementation would severely harm
the economy or environment of a state, region, or the entire country.
EPA must make a decision on a waiver request
within 90 days of receiving it.
After years of delay, Secretary of the Interior Dirk
Kempthorne made a landmark decision on whether global warming pollution
is regulated by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Kempthorne ruled that
the polar bear should be classified as a “threatened species” due to the
decline of polar sea ice, critical to its survival. Kempthorne stated:
They are likely to become endangered in the near future.
The Department of Interior, under Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, fought for
several years in the courts since
2005
to avoid making a decision on whether the precipitous decline in Arctic
sea
ice
due to global warming is making the polar bear an endangered species.
Fish and Wildlife Service director Dale Hall testified in
January
that there was no significant scientific uncertainty in the endangerment
posed by global warming to polar bears—the only legal justification
under the Endangered Species Act for a delay.
Kempthone’s decision to follow the science is in marked contrast to
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson’s action
to override his staff in refusing to regulate tailpipe greenhouse gas
emissions.
On Wednesday, House leadership told reporters that they are having
another go at an extension of the renewable and energy-efficiency tax
credits that has been stalled since last year. From E&E
News:
The House Ways and Means Committee will likely take up the new package
next week and will bring it to the floor sometime before Memorial Day,
Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) told reporters yesterday. The
renewable energy package will be part of a broader multibillion dollar
package of “tax extenders” for various items that are set to expire
this year.
“Before the Memorial Day break, we will be bringing to the floor a
comprehensive energy tax package that promotes research and
development and promotes efficiency,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) said yesterday. “The resources are there, the motivation is
real, and I think they have reached some level of agreement with the
Senate,” she added.
Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has included the
renewable tax credits with a package that would also extend tax credits
against the Alternative Minimum Tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax and
Extenders Tax Relief Act of 2008 (S.
2886).
Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA
administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional
administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.
He further reported that one of those officials had recently assessed
her performance as
“outstanding”:
Five months ago, a top U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official
gave Mary Gade a performance rating of “outstanding.” On Thursday, the
same official told her to quit or be fired as the agency’s top
regulator in the Midwest.
The regional administrators report
directly to the office of
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. So who
can the “two aides to national EPA
administrator Stephen Johnson” who “took away her powers” be? The
following are the most likely suspects:
As E&E News
reports, Sen.
Voinovich is designing his bill “with input from several industry
groups, including the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, the
National Manufacturers Association, the Edison Electric Institute and
the American Chemistry Council.”
The Washington office of Bracewell & Giuliani, a law firm that
includes President Bush’s first-term U.S.
EPA air pollution chief, Jeff Holmstead, and
Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating
Council, also helped write the legislation.
Ohio Senator George Voinovich today proposed to address the rapidly
escalating threat of climate change by delaying meaningful federal
action to control greenhouse gas emissions, obstructing existing state
programs, and allowing U.S. global warming pollution to increase for
decades to come.
“This proposal can be summed up in one word: bankrupt,” said Steve
Cochran, national climate campaign director at Environmental Defense
Fund. “It’s a detailed prescription for doing nothing. If you think
climate change is a hoax, this is your bill.”
Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation:
This phony bill would not require mandatory reductions in global
warming pollution. It’s Bush reincarnated—a repeat of the do-nothing
policies of the last eight years, and an attempt to provide
pollution-supporting senators a way to appear as though they are
addressing global warming without actually doing so. Global warming
threatens to create unprecedented food and water shortages in the
coming decades, causing massive loss of life and social and political
instability around the world. Any attempt, such as this, to block
progress in this fight and prevent America from being a clean energy
leader is repugnant and immoral. Voters are not going to be fooled.
Any senator who votes for such sham legislation will answer for it at
the ballot box.
Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency dismissed Midwest
regional administrator Mary
Gade,
one of ten such officials appointed directly by
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. Gade, a
lifelong Republican and a prominent supporter of George W.
Bush’s
pursuit of the presidency in 2000, told the Chicago Tribune, “There’s
no question this is about
Dow.”
Gade was locked in a battle with Dow Chemical over the cleanup of dioxin
poisoning from its world headquarters in Michigan. As former
EPA official Robert Sussman writes in the
Wonk
Room,
“To remove a Regional Administrator because of a disagreement over
policy at an individual site is unheard of.”
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) just spoke on the Senate floor about
Gade’s firing. Whitehouse compared her firing with the U.S. Attorney
scandal
that enveloped the Department of Justice and led to Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales’s resignation:
We do not yet know all the details of Ms. Gade’s firing, or everything
that may have gone on between her office and Dow Chemical. But from
everything that we’ve heard and seen so far, it looks like déjà vu
all over again. From an administration that values compliance with
its political agenda more than it values the trust or the best
interests of the American people. Last year we learned that this is an
administration that wouldn’t hesitate to fire capable federal
prosecutors when they wouldn’t toe an improper party line. Today it
seems that the Bush Administration might have once again removed a
highly qualified and well-regarded official whose only misstep was to
disagree with the political bosses.
Watch it:
Sen. Whitehouse also announced that he is conducting an oversight
hearing into the politicization of the
EPA
and the circumstances of Gade’s dismissal next Wednesday. The last time
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson testified
before Sen. Whitehouse, he put in a shameful performance, leading
Whitehouse to
state:
In my short time in Washington, I didn’t think I would again encounter
a witness as evasive and unresponsive as Alberto
Gonzales
was during our investigation of the U.S. Attorney scandal.
Unfortunately, today EPA Administrator
Johnson stooped to that low standard.
E&E News (subscription req.) is
reporting that the
EPA—responding to a court order—has issued
new
regulations
to reduce air pollution from petroleum refineries. But there’s a catch:
EPA also has denied environmental groups’
request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the refineries, and in
so doing, stands accused of dramatically reinterpreting the Clean Air
Act:
EPA explained
that it was working on a new global warming policy in response to last
year’s loss in the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA—a case that
started when the Bush administration denied a petition to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
The agency also opened itself up to
controversy today by saying it did not need to set any greenhouse gas
limits for the industry now because it previously had opted against
establishing such standards.
Environmentalists said they plan to sue
EPA in federal appeals court over that
reasoning. “It’s enormous,” said David Bookbinder, an attorney at the
Sierra Club. “They’re taking the position the agency has no obligation
to look at or review any other pollutant.”
Bookbinder said he was not surprised by
EPA’s decision, adding that he did not
expect the issue to be resolved until after the Bush administration
leaves office. “I don’t want these chuckleheads writing the
regulations for CO2,” he said. “What scares
me is the chunk of collateral damage done to the Clean Air
Act.”
EPA’s response to the public comments, filed
by the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project, is explained
between pages 92 and 104 of the new rule. We’re first taking a close
look at EPA’s wording ourselves, and will
chime in with further comments as needed.
But as a matter of simple analysis, it does behoove us to note that this
is
farfrom
first time that EPA has used its own
unreasonable
delay
on the Supreme Court’s Mass. v. EPA mandate as an excuse…